#FFCGN

L’uomo in più

Feature Film | IT 2001 | 100' | Subtitled German

A successful debut is like an artist’s generous promise to the audience – if it is kept later on in his or her career, the look back is even more rewarding. In Paolo Sorrentino’s early loser ballad, ONE MAN UP, all of his narrative talent and craftsmanship are already on display in an unpretentious, wise story about the existential crises of two broken men in Naples in the early 1980s. While Antonio (Andrea Renzi) feels life is a tragedy after his promising football career has come to a sudden end, pompous crooner Tony (Toni Servillo) considers the world a stage where a theater of the absurd is in play. In spite of the somewhat skimpy budget of his directorial debut, Sorrentino manages to include amazing showpieces every other minute, e.g. an extra-long plan sequence capturing Italo-disco night life, but never turns his characters into props in the process. The fact that he eventually went on to surpass and refine his masterful early strokes does not in the least diminish the qualities of this electrifying breakthrough.